Nickelodeon Hotels & Resorts Punta Cana — Hotel in Higüey

We stayed for five nights in early June 2025. ||Weather/environment - Excellent. The high was around 85F every day. It rained a couple of times, but never for very long. It’s in a beautiful area, a 40 minute drive west along the coast from Punta Cana airport. ||Check-in - Straightforward. Adults get orange NFC wristbands that are your room key and a way to charge purchases to your room. Kids don’t need one. The hotel doesn’t keep a credit card on file; you’re charged for everything when you check out, and you can use a different card than the one you booked with if you want. ||The wristbands themselves weren’t great. They’re rubber, so in the heat and humidity, they get uncomfortable quickly. You also have to mush them on the door lock for a few seconds before they’ll work, most of the time. After a few days, right when we were coming back from an excursion and were hot and tired, they didn’t work at all and I had to trudge back to the lobby to replace them. Thankfully, you don’t have to wear a band at all times to “prove” you’re a guest. They charge $150 if you lose one, though. ||Right when you check in, you’re assigned a “personal concierge” which is advertised as the way for you to book restaurants and priced add-ons. You can text or WhatsApp them. They have an ulterior motive, though. ||Staff - If you speak Spanish you’ll be in good shape to communicate with everyone. If you speak English, you should still be able to talk to most staff as long as you avoid figures of speech. The one time I had to communicate with someone who didn’t speak English, Google Translate worked well enough. ||Attitudes were all over the place. Most were friendly, but some staff looked and acted like they really didn’t want to be there. Same as any resort, really. Still, even the grumpy ones were very nice to my daughter. They really tried to make kids feel special. She’s learning Spanish, and they appreciated her efforts to speak to them in their language. ||Be careful booking anything that costs extra with the personal concierge, because they will try to rope you into a sales presentation to subsidize it. If you’re there with a partner, you both have to go. It’s 90 minutes, including a 45 minute breakfast. We opted to pay full price instead. After that, he didn’t talk to us at all for two days. ||Room -|Pros: Everything was in good repair and kept very clean.||Everything in the minibar is included: Coke products, water, cassava chips, and local beer. They refill it once a day, and you can request certain things. I recommend the spicy cassava chips. The Coke and Sprite have cane sugar rather than HFCS, like in Mexico, if that matters to you. ||Beds are comfortable. The AC works very well. The tub, shower, and sinks were fine, though I did take one shower without hot water in the morning. ||The soundproofing seemed quite good. On our last night there was loud, bass-heavy music outside, and in the master bedroom, you couldn’t hear it much at all. I’m easily bothered by noise while trying to sleep, so I very much appreciated that. This was at about 10 PM. After 11, there’s no loud noise at all, presumably because the kids are in bed by then. ||We paid extra for a swim-up room, which has a long, narrow pool right in front of it. My daughter loves swimming, so this was very worth it. They take care not to get grass and brush clippings in the water when they landscape around the pool, too. ||Room service is included, which you order through the TV menu, but it’s a bit slow (60-90 minutes; they quote 45). Strangely, while the TV mentions options like butter or red sauce to accompany pasta dishes, it doesn’t actually let you choose. We got it a few times and had to call each time to tell them our choice. Still, it all tasted very good. ||There were two 4K SDR TVs in the room, which seemed fairly new. If you brought a game console or streaming device, you can plug it in, but the input button on the remote doesn’t do anything. There’s a hidden button under the TV frame on the right side. Press it once to bring up the menu, and you can change the input from there. To go back to normal TV, you have to turn it off and back on. ||Cons:|We had to get maintenance out for the toilet once since the toilet tank wouldn’t refill. You have to push the handle all the way back up after flushing, and if that doesn’t work, pull the metal bar or turn the green dial on the pressure vessel inside the toilet tank. ||There was also a ceiling tile that rattled when the AC was on (which was nearly always) but pushing up on it a bit got that to stop. ||Grounds: |Everything looked great and was well-maintained. Everything on property is easily walkable, though there’s also a shuttle that loops around and will take you to the beach or to the water park. They don’t always stop even when there are seats available, though. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to that. Several times we just walked rather than deal with rejection. Our building (#6) to the beach or water park was about a 1/3 mile, 5-10 minute walk. ||Most signs are in both English and Spanish, but keep Google Translate on standby just in case. ||There are a few other things of interest sprinkled around the property, like a kiddie pool, a couple of photo spots, and a stage for shows at night. ||Shopping: |There are three main stores: The Nick Shop and Maracas & Kalimbas in Gourmet Village, and Nick Knacks right outside the water park. ||Maracas & Kalimbas: Sells some cheap plastic toys and clothing for inflated prices, but more importantly, they have locally-made items like clay dolls, alcohol, cigars, and coffee. There are also some first aid items. The local products, especially the clay dolls, are a great deal, $8 to $30, and there are several wood carved items too. They do sell maracas, but not kalimbas! The only thing I recommend against buying local is the regular Santo Domingo coffee in the red bag. You can get that for less than half the price in the US. They have some other flavors you can only buy locally, though. ||Nick Shop: All of the toys here cost at least 2-4 times more than they would in the US. Bring one from home unless you’re in dire need or have more money than sense. A 6” plush or figurine of a Nick character is $75, for example. They do make personalized shirts on demand here for $47, which isn’t so bad given the quick turnaround time of 8-12 hours. ||Nick Knacks: Same expensive licensed toys as the Nick Shop, but in a space smaller than a hotel room. They make you walk through it every time you go to the water park. ||Activities: |Most activities are free. Anything premium-sounding, like the Turtle Power dinner with the Ninja Turtles, is not. These aren’t always clearly disclosed on the website, but it is on the Karisma app that the activity schedule is on. ||Speaking of the app, you need to look it over every day. Unlike a cruise ship, there’s no daily intercom messages to recommend activities to you. We randomly stumbled upon several events and character meet & greets just by walking around. One of them was a Dominican outdoor dinner with a live DJ, fresh coconuts that they literally hacked open with a machete on demand, and a spit-roasted pig and that was fantastic. I don’t think that was even on the schedule at all. ||If you want to get a picture with one of the characters, that’s free. The staff were happy to take pictures with your phone without charging for it. Most of the time, only one character will be there, but sometimes they come in a pair. Check the schedule for time and location. Here’s who we saw - ||SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward||Dora the Explorer: Dora, Diego, Boots||TMNT: Leonardo & Donatello, Michelangelo & Raphael (2012 cartoon version)||Blue’s Clues: Blue, Magenta||Fairly OddParents: Cosmo or Wanda alone, or both together ||Paw Patrol: Chase & Marshall, Skye & Rubble, or any of them separately ||Santiago of the Seas: Santiago ||Merchandise and themed events at Club Nick usually include one of the above characters, plus Garfield, Avatar Aang, the Rugrats, and Lincoln and Lori Loud, but I didn’t see any meet and greets with them. None of the live-action series are referenced, except for Are You Afraid of the Dark? in the Snick Lounge along with some older Nicktoons characters like Ren & Stimpy. ||The only real popular characters with long lines to see them were the SpongeBob ones. ||There are pictures of some older Nick characters, like Ren and Stimpy, in the Snick Lounge. ||If you want to dump the kids someplace, that’s Club Nick. From 10-12 and 2-5, you can leave them there and go do something else while they have some themed activity. From 12-2 is “family play time” where you have to be there. They don’t feed them, either. ||Something they don’t tell you is that if you don’t register them at Club Nick right at 10 AM, and show up later, they aren’t obligated to take your kid. They can get full, and it’s not drop-in/drop-out. ||There’s free face painting every night at 6 PM, at least while we were there. You can make suggestions rather than having to pick from a list. Get there early, as there’s only one painter and she takes her time, so even a ten-person line can take over an hour. My daughter opted to have a Leonardo mask painted on for the Turtle Power dinner, which was the only add-on activity we did. It was about $150 for the three of us since we didn’t want to waste our morning and sanity at a sales presentation. ||That said, the $150 was worth it. All four of the TMNT (2012 cartoon style) were there, they had voice-over interactions, and you could get pictures with each one (individually). Donatello even sounded like Rob Paulsen, his actual voice actor. They taught the kids some dance moves, and they had friendly competition events with the staff, like stacking pizza boxes. Everybody gets an eye mask and (non-alcoholic) drink in your favorite turtle’s color. Dinner is a buffet and had several great options, like salmon, garlic shrimp, fried chicken, steak, mashed potatoes, and a salad bar. There was pizza too, but it wasn’t very good. The crust was tough and the cheese was low-quality. Seemed odd for a TMNT-themed event, especially when the Italian restaurant looked like they made much better-looking pizza. ||Aqua Nick water park: |There are two sections to the water park, the front area with pools, a play area and a lazy river; and a back area with water slides. We only went to the front area. Chairs and towels are free, day beds and cabanas cost extra. Aqua Bite, the restaurant there, has wraps and grill items like hamburgers, plus smoothies and drinks. We tried the chicken salad wrap, chicken wings, and hamburgers and all were good. There was a shrimp chorizo wrap on the menu, but they didn’t have it on two different days. ||Beach area: |The beach area has infinity pools as well as the actual beach and a swim-up bar. There’s no food here, but waiters will come by to bring you drinks. We got a great one who said he wasn’t supposed to bring food, but then even offered to get it from Fresco for us - which was a pretty long walk! They had Chicken Doner, fish and chips, and chicken Caesar salad which were all good. The drinks are a bit watered down, except for the coffee drinks. Those hit me pretty hard. ||We stayed up by the pools in a day bed, which unlike at Aqua Nick, were free to everyone. Probably. It wasn’t very crowded, and nobody kicked us out. No “reserved” signs either. ||The beach itself looked nice, but it was covered with seaweed, and worse, there are locals down there who will give you a hard sell on cigars, coconuts, and toys. They don’t come up to the pools, they may not be allowed to. Lifeguards were all around, at least. ||Restaurants: |Explorer’s table - this is the only restaurant open every day for lunch, and the only sit-down breakfast restaurant. It’s a buffet, and it’s decent. There are some local Dominican food options, which were good to try, and an omelet station at breakfast. ||Sweets - This is actually a combination coffee/smoothie shop and ice cream shop. There are lots of flavored coffee options, some little pastries, and some bigger things like croissants, donuts and pound cake at breakfast time. We usually ended up here rather than Explorer’s Table for breakfast.||They also had some wraps and smoked salmon bagels in here, but I would be careful ordering those. The temperature monitor at the bottom of the case said 12.4C (54F), which is WAY too high for food safety. It should be more like 2.8C (37F). I certainly hope they have good food safety practices elsewhere. ||On the ice cream side, they have a soft serve machine (broken on one of the three times we tried it) and several different flavors and mix-ins for ice cream, like a Cold Stone Creamery. We all liked the ice cream. There’s also a cotton candy machine that will make it for you on demand if you want to shell out $7 for it. ||All of the following restaurants require a reservation, which you have to make same-day through the app. If you don’t, or want to change the time, you probably won’t get in. We didn’t have any luck with that in person. Your concierge can make reservations more than a day in advance, assuming they’ll pay attention to you after you skip their sales presentation. You can order as many things as you want, but if there are leftovers, they won’t let you take them with you. Strange. ||Burgers.ph - we didn’t get the chance to go here. They’re not open every day. ||Wok Wok - an Asian Fusion restaurant. We tried the poke, seafood mixed grill, chicken chow mein, chicken yakatori kabobs, gyoza, and spring rolls. All were good except for the chicken in the chow mein being a little overcooked, but still flavorful. ||Spacewalker - an eclectic space-themed restaurant with several different kinds and styles of food. Everything we tried there was good, including the herb bread, Mercury steak, the pumpkin soup (which was more like squash soup, I think), and the chicken ravioli. The desserts were a bit off, though. The “apple pie” was a tiny, soft apple tart and the “chocolate lava cake” was like if a tiny chocolate lava cake had absolutely no chocolate sauce in it, so it was a bit dry. ||Verdello - this was supposed to be an Italian restaurant, and it looked the part, but anybody familiar with Italian food is going to notice a few things that aren’t quite right. ||They also had flatbread pizzas that looked a lot better than the ones at the Turtle Power dinner, but we didn’t order any of those. ||Appetizers were a mixed bag. The meatballs were very tasty, but they brought focaccia bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and none of them had any spices, so they were a lot blander than they should’ve been. Some rosemary for the bread and oregano for the olive oil would’ve went a long way. Also, the arancini were just bad. They were hard, solid lumps of fried rice with nothing inside, sitting in a very small amount of meat sauce. ||We got carbonara and gnocchi, which were fine. My wife also got ossobucco, which was very fatty and advertised as being on polenta, but it was on mashed potatoes. ||The tiramisu was as bad as the arancini. There were no ladyfingers in it, it didn’t taste much like coffee, and the consistency was off. It was more like a layer cake than anything. ||Fresco and Aqua Bite, the pool restaurants, were good as mentioned before. ||Snick Lounge only had drinks, but an excellent bartender, and several arcade machines with a couple dozen games each. Those were all free, which was great. They all had TMNT and TMNT 2, but there were no four-player cabinets, sadly. Air hockey tables and crane games required you to buy tokens at about $1.50-$2 each depending on how many you bought at a time. ||Spa - my wife and daughter went here and got the Mommy & Me package of a 25 minute massage, 25 minute facial, and manicure or pedicure for $299 (tip included, but my wife didn’t notice and tipped them again). She said they were definitely worth the extra and took very good care of them. ||Excursions - they have an in-house tour group, BRX, and other third-party tour groups are allowed in. Initially we booked with Nexus Tours, but they no-showed us, so don’t book with them… scrambling, my wife booked a four-hour visit to Barbara Adventure Park for dine buggy riding and swimming. One bus had power outlets and WiFi, the other didn’t. Both were comfortable. Prices were comparable to the other tour groups. ||Internet/apps - the on-site WiFi was top-notch, better than most American hotels, honestly. It covered the entire resort, including the beach, with only very few small dead zones. Speeds were 150-300 Mbps depending on where I tested it. It very rarely dropped. No sites were blocked as far as I could tell. If you watch any streaming services, keep in mind that some won’t work, notably Paramount+, which is what has nearly all of the Nickelodeon shows on it. Check Netflix, which tends to have those in the Dominican Republic, if you have to at. That’s not the resort’s fault, though. ||It’s open WiFi with no password, so if you have a VPN you should use it. Otherwise, be wary of accessing any bank apps. ||There are two apps you need on-site: The Karisma app for the activity schedule, and the Nickelodeon resort web app for booking restaurants and looking at menus. Both were functional if not elegant. The resort app gave errors that prevented us from changing a reservation time, and then when we went there in person there were no times left. Try to plan when you’ll eat for dinner that morning so you don’t have to deal with the app’s issues. ||Lastly, and this may just be a function of when we went, the resort wasn’t crowded at all. Aqua Nick was the most crowded section at any given time, and even there it was easy to find chairs in the shade. We never had to wait for restaurant tables as long as we came at the reservation time. Aside from face painting, lines were mostly short and moved quickly. I hate, hate, hate crowds (and waiting) so this may have been the best part of the experience overall for me. ||After four or five days, we started to feel like we had done pretty much everything we wanted to do, so that was plenty long enough for us. We probably won’t visit this particular resort again, not because we didn’t like it, but because our daughter will likely grow out of Nicktoons and want to try a different resort. We’ll certainly come back to the Dominican Republic in the future, though. ||This was our first all-inclusive resort, and I’m not sure we’d go for that pricing model again. We just don’t drink enough alcohol to make it worth the premium we paid for it, especially since it’s not like the kid...

We went for spring break with two other families and a total of 6 children from 3 yrs to 6 yrs old. Our friends got swim up rooms which were really fun for hanging out. We had booked a Swank suite. Upon check-in to our room we were greeted by families standing in the hallway complaining about not having hot water their entire trip. The bellhop helping with our luggage assured us each room had it's own water heater (lie 1). I immediately checked that there was no hot water at all while the bellhop was saying it was warm at the sink (lie 2). He dropped the bags and left us. I walked all the way back to the lobby to complain and Roberto at the front desk asked me if I didnt see the reviews about no hot water (like it was my fault for not seeing that this property had hw issues and still chose to visit). He also told me the entire resort had no hot water and they were working on fixing it (lie 3). I went over to our friends rooms and found they had hot water. So I went back to the lobby and called Roberto out for his lies which he immediately shut down after being called out for lying straight to my face before. The front desk acted like oh well you got assigned to one of the bad buildings, tough luck. I had to get loud (not fun on vacation) to force them to move me to our friends building which was a lesser room(but had hw). I asked for a refund for the price difference and they refused. I was just happy to get out of the other building. I met other families the rest of the week complaining about not being able to shower all week and I felt somewhat guilty when I took piping hot showers.||The resort is very large and walking with little children is difficult. They had 2 golf carts going from the beach to the water park but they took about 15 mins to get picked up and were usually full. This slowed us down quite a bit. ||The pools were nice, swim up pools were fun. The water park was great for our group of kids but I could see 10+ yr olds being bored with no large slides. I believe they are building a larger slide area that was under construction now. We also went to Hard Rock which had much better slides and the 6 yr olds went down them all! ||Entertainment was lacking. We saw one show (Orange Carpet) which the kids loved. All the characters were there dancing. Unfortunately this was the only real show like this that they had. They should have had those every night but did not. They also only have a few character meet and greets and most are surprises so we wound up meeting the Fairly Odd Parents which nobody knew. So we booked the character breakfast and turtle dinners which are about $360 each for a family of 4. The food at these were bad so prepare to eat elsewhere before arriving for dinner.||We had a bad experience for the Turtle Dinner. It was booked and scheduled for 7:30. When we arrived we saw we were missing stuff already. It turns out they moved it to 6:30 so they could squeeze in an 8:30 show. No one told us and the app and tv still showed 7:30pm. All the families that arrived at 7:30 were ushered around to take quick photos with the 4 turtles. Then they did a little ninja training routine and said good bye. We were all like what just happened? We complained and they told us we came an hour late and it wasnt there fault. At checkout we told them all 3 families were not paying for the dinner and they refused to help. Their manager was in a meeting and that we had to pay and complain later. They were trying to wait us out but we were going to the Hard Rock next so we had time to keep complaining. After they figured out we were persistent and from Jersey we would not fall for their lies. Finally they gave in and we were able to checkout after about 2 hrs. They also did not like hearing me tell arriving guests about check ling their hot water immediately upon getting to their rooms, haha. ||Overall, the 6 kids had a blast, the parents found enough booze and food to get by. The Snick Lounge has arcade game style emulators which the kids loved. It also hat a nice bar for the adults. The sweetery was also a favorite with good icecream. ||This place is for the kids and they had a blast, but it could have been so much better. A better management team could make this place great. Invest in some new water heaters and some more golf carts. Dont make your staff lie to guests to cover the resorts short comings.|| Our friends who went 2 years ago said it used to be a lot better. Hopefully they can fix the problems and get this place up to 4 and 5...

Parents – I’m writing this in the hope of saving at least one family from the disappointment we experienced. Overall Rating: 2/5 ⭐

Room & Housekeeping I'll start with the positive: our ocean view room was clean, comfortable, and well-laid out. I appreciated the separate King bedroom, and the view was gorgeous. The housekeeping folks were lovely.

Service Service across the resort was abysmal. Asking for anything felt like you were inconveniencing the staff. Eye rolls, sighs, and an overall sense of "you’re bothering us" was the norm. • Room Service: The first morning we ordered 2 coffees and milk using the TV, which said delivery would take 45 minutes. After 58 minutes we called and were told “It’s coming.” Eighteen minutes later — still nothing. We gave up. Tried again the second morning — nothing at all. It was a complete joke. • Restaurant Reservations: Despite having confirmation emails for our dinner reservations with friends, 2/3 nights the restaurants had no record of them. Staff scrambled to seat us but were clearly unprepared.

Restaurants & Food The food was supbar at best. Ordering any minor change to a dish was difficult unless you speak Spanish. I tried to order Chicken Parmesan with spaghetti (instead of potatoes) at the Italian restaurant and struggled to communicate my request. Also, for a kid-focused resort, the dining options around the pool were surprisingly limited. They desperately need a snack shack with kid-friendly foods. The closest option is Fresca, which mainly serves ceviche and adult-style meals.

Pools The pools themselves are nice, but be aware: • Towel Service: You must participate in the towel service where they give you key cards for your family and you trade them in for towels each day. However, the kiosk closes earlier than the pool. Why? • Swim-Up Rooms: If you booked a swim-up room, know that the “private pool” is only open during certain hours — no night swimming — and they shock the water with chemicals during the day, when guests are using it. • Shade is limited at the pools and the umbrellas do little to help.

Water Park The water park is across the street — you can walk or be driven in a resort golf cart. The main splash area you see in the photos is up front, but the three big slides you may have seen advertised are tucked in the back, down a path and past a large concrete structure. If you have kids of different ages/sizes (under 48” and over 48”), expect to split up your family.

Nickelodeon Theming Everything "Nickelodeon" costs extra — getting slimed, character breakfast, etc. Photos with characters are free but lines are long and the characters rarely appeared.

Dress your kids in dark swimsuits if you plan on being there for the general sliming at 3:00. The stuff stains like crazy and we have not been able to get it out.

Be prepared for sticker shock at the gift shop. I completely understand marking items up but a plastic pineapple about 12” tall goes for $110.

Entertainment & Activities Entertainment at the resort was severely lacking. Outside of an occasional water balloon toss run by staff, don’t expect ongoing activities to keep kids entertained.

Most of the TV channels, including Nickelodeon, only play in Spanish. It's not a huge issue, but when you want to watch, it’s frustrating.

The evening theater shows were a letdown: • The first "show" each night was usually just a handful of kids picked from the audience to play games (like Simon Says) — not an actual performance. • If characters appeared, they come out for one song only. • The second show doesn’t start until 8:45 PM, which feels very late for a family resort. • Some of the evening performances featured scantily clad dancers — it was just bizarre.

Concierge Service Each family is assigned a "concierge" housed in a private gazebo. Sounds fancy, but ours was almost never there when we needed them.

Bottom Line We travel extensively around the world and have never experienced such consistently poor service. Nickelodeon Resort Punta Cana looks beautiful in photos, but sadly, that's where...